SOURCE: Gray, Charlotte Schiander. “The Author and His Work.” In Klaus Rifbjerg, pp. 75-90. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Gray discusses Klaus Rifbjerg's experimental style in his memoirs, short stories, and novels.

Travelling and Maturing

Stages of crisis, and of potentially renewed insight and development, occur especially when a character is about to enter adulthood or when he is assessing his status as an adult approaching middle age. The travel descriptions follow the same biological-psychological pattern. For example, Leif in Leif the Happy, Jr. (1971), is confronted with a problem similar to that of Janus and Tore in The Chronic Innocence, while Misse, in The Road Along Which, shares problems with the other traveller, Anna from Anna (I) Anna. The schoolboys in Thanks for the Trip are related to those in The Chronic Innocence. Geographically, Leif is travelling home to Denmark from New York; mentally, he...